Samsung ML-1915 review

The Samsung ML-1915 might not offer colour, but with a price of £75, it's every bit as eye-catching as the colour Oki C110 at £115 that impressed us last month. For clean and fast text, a mono laser printer like the Samsung ML-1915 is still the best deal.

The Samsung ML-1915 might not offer colour, but with a price of £75, it's every bit as eye-catching as the colour Oki C110 at £115 that impressed us last month. For clean and fast text, a mono laser printer like the Samsung ML-1915 is still the best deal.

It helps that the Samsung ML-1915 shows few signs of its low-slung price. With its polished black casing and alluringly curved edges, the ML-1915 is one of the more attractive laser printers we've seen. Its dimensions are very modest, and at just 7.25kg, it's not a great deal heavier than the typical inkjet.

But unlike many inkjets, the Samsung ML-1915 is robust with it. The chunky paper input tray holds up to 250 sheets - impressive for a sub-£100 printer - and pages drop neatly into the output tray on top. One minor criticism is that it's rather shallow, and can hold no more than 80 sheets.

Overall though, we think the paper handling facilities are reliable and well executed given the Samsung ML-1915's price. It's clearly a model aimed at the home and small business user who'll be wanting to have a printer attached directly to their PC, as shown by the lack of Ethernet - only a USB connection is included.

The Print Screen button is a very nice feature that could prove extremely handy. Give the button a quick jab, and it'll print out whatever's currently on the screen. Hold the button down for a few seconds instead, and it'll print out the active window.

Simple but very effective, it's great for taking snapshots of anything that grabs attention. The quality isn't amazing, and text on our web browser print was a little fuzzy, but overall it's a nice time saver.

There are two quality modes: at its fastest, it generated pages of text at a speed of 14.6ppm, and even at the highest resolution of 1200x600, it managed a very decent 11.5ppm, and text output is crisp and clean.

Mono lasers tend not to be great at graphics, and the Samsung ML-1915 struggled with high detail on photos, while speed dropped to 11.1ppm and 9.6ppm for A4 graphics at the normal- and high-resolution modes. It's quite good enough for diagrams and PowerPoint presentations, although you'll want something else to regularly print out detailed photos.

At around 2.6p for a page of mono, even the Samsung’s running costs are fairly low compared to similarly priced printers. The Samsung ML-1915 is very well priced, looks good and works extremely well. If you’re looking for an affordable text churner, this is an outstanding buy.

The Kyocera Mita FS-1320D mono laser printer is unlikely to match the feats of the all-conquering Kyocera FS-C5100DN, but it's a very competitive and flexible printer for anyone who values reliable mono printing over all else.